Radical socialization through exchange produces absolute solitude and alienation

Evidence

The wily solitary is already homo œconomicus, for whom all reasonable things are alike: hence the Odyssey is already a Robinsonade. Both Odysseus and Crusoe, the two shipwrecked mariners, make their weakness (that of the individual who parts from the collectivity) their social strength. Delivered up to the mercy of the waves, helplessly isolated, their very isolation forces them recklessly to pursue an atomistic interest. They embody the principle of capitalist economy, even before they have recourse to a servant; but what they preserve materially from the past for the furthering of their new enterprise is evidence for the contention that the entrepreneur has always gone about his competitive business with more initial capital than his mere physicial capacity. Their impotence in regard to nature already acts as an ideology to advance their social hegemony. Odysseus’ defenselessness against the breakers is of the same stamp as the traveler’s justification of his enrichment at the expense of the aboriginal savage. This was to be confirmed later on by bourgeois economics in the form of the concept of risk: the possibility of failure becomes the postulate of a moral excuse for profit. From the standpoint of the developed exchange society and its individuals, the adventures of Odysseus are an exact representation of the risks which mark out the road to success. Odysseus lives by the original constitutive principle of civil society: one had the choice between deceit or failure. Deception was the mark of the ratio which betrayed its particularity. Hence universal socialization, as outlined in the narratives of the world traveler Odysseus and the solo manufacturer Crusoe, from the start included the absolute solitude which emerged so clearly at the end of the bourgeois era. Radical socialization means radical alienation. Odysseus and Crusoe are both concerned with totality: the former measures whereas the latter produces it. Both realize totality only in complete alienation from all other men, who meet the two protagonists only in an alienated form—as enemies or as points of support, but always as tools, as things. — Theodor W. Adorno, Max Horkheimer, Dialectic of Enlightenment, 67

Categorization

• XREF: Traces the classic ‘Odyssey as Robinsonade’ reading; connects to the culture-industry argument that individuation under capitalism is illusory, and to Marx’s alienation. — connects to: Extreme social control occurs in both the widest and narrowest circles simultaneously — Georg Simmel, on individuality and social forms_…, 641; Commodity alienation masquerades as closeness while true culture stays uncomprehended — Theodor W. Adorno, Minima Moralia: Reflections from…, 168; Alienation presupposes an earlier unalienated human relationship to distort (+4 more)
• DEFINE: Defines the core critical-theory move: individualization under exchange society is simultaneously total social integration, i.e. isolation.

Broader Connections

• Extreme social control occurs in both the widest and narrowest circles simultaneously #corroborates (0.72) — Georg Simmel, on individuality and social forms_…, 641